Need new extruder fan

I think it’s time I replaced my extruder fan (because it finally crapped out on me). For the past year (maybe two) it would start up pretty grindy sounding. Poke a finger in the blades to stop it and then release and it would spin right up to normal speed. Not any more.

Can someone let me know the specs of the fan so I can track one down somewhere? I’ll try local first as that will be quickest. I guess I need size, power requirements and what else?

40x40 12V, should work.

I’m a big fan of Noctua fans. They’re a little more spendy, but dead silent while running.

1 Like

Found a Noctua local. Spendy indeed but only $1 more than on Amazon and I’m trying so hard to stay away from the rainforest these days…

Thanks for the info guys.

I finally got around to putting the new fan on (funny how a customer order can motivate a guy - hahaha). It was a three wire fan though so I want to make sure I connected it properly by just using red/red, black/black. I ignored the yellow wire altogether.

The fan runs but oh man is it ever quiet. I’d even go so far as to call it silent. How do I know if I’m getting proper cooling? Would the hotend overheat on me if it wasn’t being regulated enough?

Odd things happen if the cooling is bad, easiest to see is things like PLA will clog as the heat zone is too large and the filament just bulges and jams the filament path on slow sections of a print.

So typically you will get random failures or just poor quality prints…but if your ambient is low enough it might work fine.

Yes. Red/Red. Black/Black.

The yellow is for if you can provide a pwm signal it can adjust the speed. You should be able to play with the fan by hooking the yellow to ground or to the same voltage as Red. at Ground it should run one speed and at voltage it should run another. I believe without it hooked up, it runs at full speed (but I could be wrong). I don’t have mine hooked to anything.

your extruder fan is a small computer fan